Megan Smith has been curating a Dayton community cookbook called From Dayton, With Love: A Collection of Treasured Sweets, Past & Present.
It’s a 100-page collection of 35 recipes and family stories from across the Miami Valley — Smith calls it a “ true love letter to Dayton told through generations of home bakers.”
We spoke to her about about it ahead of the book’s launch party at Sueño on Nov. 23.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Smith: I've just always loved community cookbooks, and I haven't heard much about them lately. And so I'm sure they still exist, but I wanted to do my version of it, so that's kind of where the idea came from.
Kenney: How did the process of curation start?
Smith: You know, I went into it not knowing, so I kind of had some ideas going in that I also wanted to marry it with some historical recipe.
I made an appointment with the Ohio State University Library Archives, and they were able to pull some cookbooks for me from like late 1800s from the Westminster Presbyterian Church. There was a lady's society there. They pulled some really gorgeous cookbooks for me. I started doing some of my own research and my own polling of recipes and then simultaneously recipes were pouring in from the community, so I really had a wealth of things to work from and what came together was a hundred-page cookbook really quickly. I'm really excited to be sharing it with everybody right now
Kenney: Gosh, I hate to ask you about favorites since it is a community cookbook, but I know just from some of the photos that I've seen, I'm definitely interested in. I'm, just in the last couple of years, cooking more savory foods and I have not even delved into the sweet side of things.
Smith:I chose for this cookbook recipes that are actually very forgiving. I wanted things that felt approachable for the everyday cook. This sounds a little cliche, but we are very busy. I am a baker and I can do the complicated things, but I'm busy as well and I don't have time to mess with recipes that are going to collapse on me and are going to require a lot of tempering and a lot of equipment even.
I wanted to choose recipes for this the everyday person could tackle and could even make mistakes, and it will still be edible. It's hard to pick one, of course, but I would say that, by and large, every recipe that you're goning to come across in this cookbook, you will be able to make and even fail at a couple steps and not have to trash it at the end.
Kenney: Is there anything that you learned during the process of putting this all together, maybe about Dayton itself?
Smith: Well, definitely on the history of Dayton side, I did not realize how steeped in just the industry and even like flour. I didn't realize the flour mills that were downtown.
Again, back to the archives at Ohio State, a lot of what they pulled for me were these little booklets that were from the flour mills, that they would put out their own recipe booklets to promote their flour. So, just looking through those and realizing just even along Fifth Street where... Salar and Lily's are now, those were flour mills right there along the railroads. That was fascinating to methat this was such an industry for getting your grain, and getting your flour.
So I really enjoyed that and I guess I think as all of us age we become more and more of a history buff, but learning more about these women that would submit their recipes, and I would say this pivots a bit more to even just modern day now, a lot of the recipes that came from our Daytonians here, I was really surprised.
I thought they were just going to be a lot of like sugar cookies, molasses cookies, and we do have those in the cookbooks but wow, I really surprised at how many international recipes were coming.
These are from people here who are just so proud of their heritage. Portuguese recipes, and Hungarian, and German, and Indian recipes. It was really exciting for me to see, these aren't just like Midwest holiday cookies or something that we're getting. It was sweets coming from really around the world from Daytonians have landed here over the years. So that was really exiting.
Kenney: The book is called From Dayton with Love: A Collection of Treasured Sweets, Past and Present. Megan Smith, thanks so much for putting this book together. I'm sure it'll bring a lot of people joy over the upcoming holiday season and beyond. Where can people find the book?
Smith: A lot of people are wanting to order online just to have it delivered to their door, which I completely get. You can do that at daytoncookbook.com. And then locally, we will have it at different shops. I would check online to see as we add locations, but currently you could go to Antique Village. They have them at the checkout. I will be also at Holly Days down at the Dayton Arcade. That's a three-day event that will be happening Dec. 10, 11, 12. So I'll be there as well with cookbooks.
